Moon Boy

Rating:
Summary: Today's kids should be exposed to the lessons in this book!
Review: Considering the mayhem in today's schools and the fact that experts are saying that changes in sensitivity must be made at the elementary level, the book Moonboy is made to order! This wonderful book imparts a valuable lesson--that differences in dress and custom must not be deciding factors on who the person really is, that we must look beneath or beyond the surface. Moonboy is a love, but he looks and acts very different, due to his previous alien environment. He lived on the Moon with his father who was too busy pulling the tides, etc., to pay attention to him and play with him. The Old Man in the Moon advised his son to find friends on earth, so Moonboy jumped down to a town called Poppygold. He could wish for anything and it appeared--everything but friends. He was very sad and lonely, alienated in a way he did not expect, but still he hoped someone would come into his life. Across town a kid named Ed Bread decided to do something nobody else had tried-- to go and see for himself what this "weird new kid" was all about. Moonboy shows Ed what's inside of him. It's not scary, bad stuff, not the horrors everyone else in Poppygold imagined. What's inside of Moonboy is simply wonderful--a world of imagination and beauty, of love and joy. All it takes is one sensitive kid (Ed, in this case) to search for that goodness, and he brings this find to everyone else in the town. How many little kids are shunned because they're different? How many sit on the sidelines and cry because they're not allowed into the "in" crowd? This starts very early. My own daughter experienced this sort of thing in gradeschool, and I'm sure it was part of the reason she wrote about it so convincingly in her first book. Then, there are her fantastic illustrations. I watched her as she drew and painted many of the pages. Each page took a month. Her last pages were produced in Portland where the summer temp. soared up to 100 degrees. She sat in her un-airconditioned attic with three fans pointed at her, a sweatband around her forehead so she wouldn't drip on the pages she was working on, and she took her time. She's meticulous, and it shows in the work. I'm proud of her, and even if this weren't my own daughter's book, I'd love it. If I were a gradeschool teacher, I'd want to use it in my class room.

Rating:
Summary: Great Story--Great Message!
Review: Moonboy is wonderfully written and illustrated. The positive message of how prejudice can isolate another person is artfully presented through the experiences of the title character. In this age of violence, all young people should be exposed to this story!

Rating:
Summary: Buy it now, thank me later!
Review: This book has it all: Great story, phenomenal artwork. In the tradition of William Joyce and J. Otto Seibold, "Moonboy" is a combination of top-notch storytelling and exquisitely, thoughtfully detailed artwork. Buy it. Read it. Keep it forever.